Top Five elements for success regarding outsourcing social media marketing activity

At the Carvill creative, they actively handle social media activity for their clients which they have been doing for the past few years now. It is evident that as years go by, social media marketing is growing in popularity. All kinds of businesses with different shapes and sizes are learning ways they can be leveraging the far reaching social channels to employ with customers in order to create new business and market their services & products. As business owners and marketers venture into the facts of social media engagement, they are getting to know that there’s more to it than just simply acquiring an intern for the summer and letting them go.

A few years back, if you had to key into Google “social media management,” the sponsored ads would not be found in the searches, but if you tried it today you will find different solutions offered to you, from huge advertising, public relations and marketing agencies, all the way to independent “gurus” vowing to transform the way you market your business forever. The business owners and marketers with thorough research of the social media channels have come to understand the fact that to be social and active on the channels must be well planned for, managed effectively, and for it to be a success, it is a time consuming activity.

The top 5 factors to consider when outsourcing your social media marketing are as follows:

Home from home – Home from home is a term used to imply the partnership that you’ve got with people, a person or an agency that you’re working with requires being seamless. All in all, the good thing about social media marketing is that it allows you to have networked conversations and share your sentiments, beliefs, expertise and brand values. In conjunction to this statement, it’s utterly integral that whoever you outsourced this key marketing role to comprehend the heart and soul of your business and brand and are in a position to communicate for you effectively.

Continued contact – Make sure that you are in touch always with one another. It is very useful if you maintain being the custodian of your communications. Whatever your social media partner shares have to be “on message” and therefore, you have to agree to objectives, important messages and the procedure for having to ‘sign off’ before sharing anything. Resources that agencies use are available which also allows clients to see what’s pending to share. When your partners are carrying out the other work including blogging, building compelling content, listening and sharing, your duty is to insure that you’re okay with everything that is being shared. Partners may be in a position to identify an opportunity for comment or to disclose thought leadership, therefore be certain to have someone present for them to contact for such urgent opportunities.

Blend into your marketing mix – if the social team are briefed and are fully absorbed in your brand values and attributes, the next important thing is that they well comprehend your general marketing goals and have the chance to counter check all marketing activities you have got lined up. For instance, when you have an annual event scheduled, so how can you leverage the social channels too. In the case of managing a direct mail campaign, you should therefore consider how to promote your social channels. Are the people you’re looking for to obtain response from through the campaign ask questions using Facebook or Twitter thread? Maybe it is more sensible to create direct response mechanism to increase traffic to your Facebook page to grow likes? The most important thing is to ensure that the social channels are fit into your marketing mix where possible. Furthermore, the social marketing team should work together with you in order to make sure that you leverage the channels very well. Indeed, if you don’t allow them to know what your plans are how are they supposed to know! Try your best to share.

Reporting regularly – To maintain a close understanding of performance is essential. Just like most of the marketing activities, you’re required to comprehend what’s working and what isn’t, this helps you to perform what is known as intelligent marketing where one continuously learns, thus leading to optimizing your marketing role. Make it a habit to get regular reports like on a monthly basis on the progress of your social marketing. Easy benchmarks for instance growth in relevant followers & fans and reach that is to what extend your messages are being communicated are just two of the basics. In addition, there are other very important indicators like analysis of web traffic to observe if the channels are providing more, an overall uplift in traffic to your site and bottom line activity like new lead generation.

Joining up your activity – In close contention with the lead generation in the previous point above (point 4), is by ensuring that your website or sought after landing page is good for the purpose. On very few occasions, we observe campaigns with the aim to push for new lead generation, instead, the direction all the marketing activity is driving to does not attain a call to action point. The partners in your social marketing should have experience in joined up marketing activity and be in a position to advise you on methods for obtaining leads, providing you with another important element to measure performance against and fully give you with the opportunity to obtain interest and create new leads.

Just like any other kind of marketing, Social marketing can be time consuming. By thinking strategically about your goals and then sharing them very distinctly with the team you select to run your social marketing activity is very important. Hiring experts for business makes great sense. But also bear in mind that you benefit a lot if the outsourced team is exclusively enabled to become an extension of your business. Just like taking a new employee, they should be inducted into your brand, products and services too. A lot of effort should be placed in the beginning and later their knowledge will continue growing. To sum up, make a good brief, keep them close, communicate more often, and make sure your objectives are understood continuously. If you follow these steps, you will have a great relationship.